How to create perfect product photography

The product photo is your first chance to grab your customer. This goes for online shops. How many of these online marketplaces involve typing a word in the search bar and scrolling through thousands of pictures to find what you are looking for? All of them. Every single one of them. THAT is why it is so important to have good photos. Now, I am sure you are wondering “if it is so important, how do I get them?” Doesn’t matter what product you are selling, if your craft can be worn or is purely decorative, or whatever it is that you craft.  The reasons and the methods are the same, so listen up.  Here we go.

Use natural lighting.  Not direct sunlight, which can wash your image out, but use the light that God created whenever possible.  Really, even a white light bulb will work, it’s that white color that does the trick and produces clear and beautiful images.  Using artificial lighting will create a very yellowed picture that is quite amateur and people will wonder at the quality of your craft if the quality of the picture of your craft is so poor.

Create a scene for your craft.  This may mean obtaining a model to fashion your craft.  Show your craft being used for its intended purpose.  Sometimes it can be very difficult to know what a product is by JUST the images.  Even if they are really good images, the nature of the object is abstract in still-life photos.  You are selling a product, so let that product sell itself!  This also works great to show off the size of the craft, which can also be difficult to depict in images.

Edit the photo.  Whether this is playing around with the filters, or cropping the image, don’t be afraid of editing programs.  You can find some great free programs online, download the picture, edit it, save it, not a whole lot of stress or extra work.  Or, if you want to go all out with photo shop…that works pretty well too, but in my experience photo shop requires education, whereas the free online programs are fairly simple and self-explanatory.  Don’t forget to crop out any unnecessary portions of the photo.  You don’t want to distract your potential customer from what is really being sold.

Use several different photos.  Do not create a collage if you are allowed more than one image.  This might just be a personal peeve, but I just don’t understand why sellers will squeeze five pictures of their product into one collage instead of just putting each picture seperately.  Show different angles of the craft, show details, show how it looks far away.  Let your customer see your craft in as many different ways as possible. 

Don’t post two of the same picture just because you have an empty slot, though.

If all else fails, hire a professional.  This is one of my favorite methods of getting good product photography.  A lot of photographer’s are willing to capture images of your craft *with* models for free…you just have to find them.  They do all the work for you!  Only problem would be getting your product back.

You don’t need a super fancy camera or equipment in order to take good images.  You don’t even need super complicated photo editing programs on your computer.  Follow these steps and you are well on your way to some excellent product photography.